I like the way one of my students, Andy Haas, put it once. He was giving a talk at a DZERO workshop on the Level 3 computer farm and trying to make a point about the number and type of computers that were in the farm. He drew an analogy to the number of laptops that were open in the room. It can be a little spooky – almost everyone has one, and almost everyone has them open during conference talks. In Andy’s case there were about 100 people in the room. And when you are giving the talk you have to wonder: how many people are listening!?

There is another side-effect, however. It is rare that the hotel, or whatever, is ready for the large number of devices that we particle physicists bring to a meeting. In the old days it was a laptop per person and now add in a cell phone that also wants a internet connection. Apparently most conference organizers used to use to guess that it would be about 1 in 5 people would have a portable that needed a connection at any one time. Folks from particle physics, however, just blew that curve! The result was often lost wifi connections, many seconds to load a page, and an inability to download the conference agenda! As conference organizer we have long ago learned that is one of the most important things to get right – and one of the key things that will be used to judge the organization of your conference.

The article is interesting in another aspect as well (other that pointing out a problem we’ve been dealing with for more than 10 years now). WiFi is not really designed for this sort of use. Which leads to the question – what is next?

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[…] The result was often lost wifi connections, many seconds to load a page, and an inability to download the conference agenda! As conference organizer we have long ago learned that is one of the most important things to get right – and … Here is the original post: Getting WiFi in a conference of online addicts is hard « Life as a … […]